ROSSENDALE golfer Ashley Siddle will take a welcome break from his A Level exams this weekend when he represents Lancashire Boys in the Northern Boys Championships.

The 18-year-old will join his good friend Ben Scott, who has represented Lancashire's full side this year as well the Boys' team, in the competition in Northumbria.

For Haslingden High School pupil Siddle, the current club champion at Rossendale, it will be his first Northern Boys Championship.

The 18-year-old was due to sit his last A Level exam today -- he has been studying PE and Technology -- before driving up to the North East with his friend and team-mate Scott.

"Me and Ben are good friends and it was nice to be called up in the same team as him," said Siddle, who plays off scratch. "Most of the junior players in the area are good mates.

"We are driving up today and getting a few practise rounds in before the competition on Saturday."

There will be 13 counties competing in the 36-hole event which Siddle thinks Lancashire have a good chance of winning.

"I think we will go in as one of the favourites to win. We have got a really good side this year," he said.

"The Northern Boys Championships is quite a big tournament. I am proud to have been selected especially in a six-man team because I was dropped from the 12-man squad when I went on a golfing holiday last year.

"I needed a good performance in the Lancashire Championships to get me back in with a shout and I finished 10th so I was really pleased with that. That was my best performance so far in that competition and then I won the East Lancs scratch competition at Burnley a few weeks ago."

Siddle is also the ELGA Boys captain and a former winner of the East Lancashire Boys Championship and could have a massive future ahead of him.

"I would like to go on a golf scholarship and then in a few years turn professional," he said.

"I haven't got anything lined up yet scholarship-wise, I am looking into it at the moment but I would like to go to America.

"Gareth Gillatt, though, who also plays at Rossendale, is about to go to New Zealand on a scholarship so that is also an option."

A first reserve for the England Boys squad to face Scotland in a fortnight, Siddle hopes to make his debut for the national boys' team this summer.

"Someone has whispered in my ear that if I don't play in the match against Scotland in a fortnight's time I will definitely get my chance against Wales in August."

Siddle will play in the Bury Championship next week as a warm up to the English Amateur and the British Boys Championships.

"That's the biggest junior tournament in the world," he said. " I didn't do so well last year -- I was knocked out in the first round -- but I have been playing well this year and I should do much better."

But first the Northern Boys Championships beckons.

"It's an important event that I have been practising hard for and it is a team event so you don't want to let anybody down," he said.

"The best of the north of England will be there so we will be out to give a good account of ourselves."